Rinaldo selected issue in Botticher that a material can't be applied willy nilly to an architecture and be any meaningful style - it has to be related to the specific needs. But in that concept there is a developmental notion that architectural form emerges over time. This is a stunning notion in Botticher. That essentially, form can't be applied, but must rather be derived out of the consideration and processing of material logics. Another interesting feature of Rinalo's remark is that the comparison can be drawn between Foucault and Botticher -- interesting -- meaning thatt both are looking for the formation of a particular style within the conexts of its developmental qualities. In that sense, one supposes, a mode of thinking is not necessarily different than a particular style of archiecture. i think this is useful point. Be careful though, Foucault's point is not just about the history of ideas being philosophical and then turning into science -- rather that the way in which we understand all the qualities of the world, the nature of being, is in a way defined by how we set up categories, how we arrange and compare them, and the techniques we use to do that. Finally, Rinaldo makes an important point that what is being rejected is mimesis -- the idea of imitation as the basis of style.
Like Rinaldo Rikard points out the issue of mimesis.
Let's note the intensity of this problem.
Do not just imitate the outward visible forms as a premise for style.
Then Rikard goes on to identify a set of parallels witrh Foucalty, one of them being no doubt the relation to a new sense of work and economy. These are beginning to be understood as a specific value of labour locae within the anthropological unity of man and the horizon of finitude. We should first of all note that it is the economic and political conditions that define a style insofar as these are born out by the nature of work or as he calls it labor.
Second are the linguistic and third are the biological axes of thought. And indeed that there is a "nature" that is to say organic situation to something's "development." i would also like to note that one of the things at stake is how labor is understood as a force of work -- that is to say action -- that reveals itself in the nature of finish. To the degreee that such finish in craftsmanship is irregular, imperfect, etc., it is also a sign for Ruskin of freedom and of life as such.
* I made the point earlier in class that Gothic would now (after the REnaissance) be reconsidered as a fudamentally major development of architecture in western history, often, one should say, because of its more emergent qualities.
Maureen follows up in an interestung way, with Foucault's Panopticon. You may not realize it but thay too is essential here because of the various Christian based social reform movements that parallel the rise of socialist and comununist ones. But more importantly that imperfection is a force and it is axpressive of life. This is a bioloigucal notion as much as any and that his chemical parallel is perfect: the consituetnt elemts cannot be seen.
Ok, more later
i just wanted get these out
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Questions on Ruskin V-l-D and Semper
2) Viollet-le-duc on metaphor and function: Lectures on Architecture, vol.2, trans. Benjamin Bucknall, New York, 1987; 51-100 (Reader): Ruskin on ornament and organism: Stones of Venice, Chapter VI, New York, Peter Fenelon Collier & Son, MCM (vol.2); 152 -181. (Reader)
3) Gottfried Semper, Manuscript 122 and 124, RES (Fall 1982); 8-22. (Reader)
Concerning all three authors:
What is the ontological status of the objects of their analysis (i.e., systems, objects, etc.)?
What are the terms of the analyses?
What do the analyses reveal/produce?
V-l-D: Lect. XII
1) How does V-l-D analyse building material? What is his analysis of iron, and what temperment does it have?
2) What kind of programmatic affect does iron have as a construction material?
3) What value does V-l-D give the term "imitation"? What does the term refer to?
4) What does the term organic mean in the context of this lecture, and what kind of ontology does it have?
Ruskin
1) What is the ontology of labour and is it visible or invisible?
2) What does labour express, and how does it express it in architecture? (And what, therefore, does architecture express?) What role does the term imperfection play here?
3) What, ultimately, is the moral lesson? And how is it related to the ontology of labour?
Semper: Manuscripts 122, and 124
1) What does Semper mean by contrasting exterior order and organic system?
2) In what sense does the design industry precede architecture and determine it?
3) What is a force "exerted on a style?"
4) What does classification mean? What is it based on?
5) Is a wall (Wand/Gewand) an object or an event? (i.e., what was its original ontology?)
3) Gottfried Semper, Manuscript 122 and 124, RES (Fall 1982); 8-22. (Reader)
Concerning all three authors:
What is the ontological status of the objects of their analysis (i.e., systems, objects, etc.)?
What are the terms of the analyses?
What do the analyses reveal/produce?
V-l-D: Lect. XII
1) How does V-l-D analyse building material? What is his analysis of iron, and what temperment does it have?
2) What kind of programmatic affect does iron have as a construction material?
3) What value does V-l-D give the term "imitation"? What does the term refer to?
4) What does the term organic mean in the context of this lecture, and what kind of ontology does it have?
Ruskin
1) What is the ontology of labour and is it visible or invisible?
2) What does labour express, and how does it express it in architecture? (And what, therefore, does architecture express?) What role does the term imperfection play here?
3) What, ultimately, is the moral lesson? And how is it related to the ontology of labour?
Semper: Manuscripts 122, and 124
1) What does Semper mean by contrasting exterior order and organic system?
2) In what sense does the design industry precede architecture and determine it?
3) What is a force "exerted on a style?"
4) What does classification mean? What is it based on?
5) Is a wall (Wand/Gewand) an object or an event? (i.e., what was its original ontology?)
Notes on Botticher
The Bötticher text:
Karl Gottliebe Wilhelm Bötticher, "The Principles of the Hellenic and Germanic Ways of Building," in Wolfgang Hermann ed., In What Style should we Build? The German Debate on Architectural Style, Santa Monica, 1992;147-161. (Reader)
(Commemorative address on the occasion of Schinkel's birthday (d. 1841), pub'd originally in Allgemeine Bauzeitung 11, 1848)
Summary Remarks: Bötticher does not think that the true expression of Style can be derived from the outer, visible form of buildings, for the essentials of Style are really the structural principles (related to the system of covering) and the material conditions. "Therefore the covering reveals the structural principle of every Style and constitutes the criterion by which to judge it. What comes first with any style is the development of a structural force that emanates form the material and, as an active principle, permeates the system of the covering. Only three structural forces can be used architecturally . . . the secret of the structural dynamics of a material lies in its texture, that is to say, in the law of atomic order. . . The material is aroused and compelled to demonstrate its structural strength once it has been given a form that is appropriate to it and at the same time fits it to perform a space-creating architectural function . . . This structural subjugation of the material is at the root of all architecture." (154) When discussing the as-yet-unknown modern Style, Bötticher asserts that the material to be used, given present needs, is iron and that the "structural principle is thus to be adopted from the arcuated system and transformed into a new and hitherto unknown system," i.e., the analysis of function (material and spatial organization) will provide the correct Style which is as yet not visible. And finally, like Hübsch, Bötticher argues for a non-mimetic code: the relation between kernform and kunstform is that the "architectural system in its purely structural form is a technical product", it is an "invented form without a model in the outside world", while the decorations that express certain structural conditions, are however based on natural forms.
1. What is the origin of form according to Bötticher?
(This should rather be stated as, What is the basis of form?)
Bötticher does not think that the true expression of Style can be derived from the outer, visible form of buildings, for the essentials of Style are really the structural principles (related to the system of covering) and the material conditions.
The essence of any particular style is indicated by the system according to which the covering of space is articulated into parts or structural unit. . . Therefore the covering reveals the structural principle of every Style and constitutes the criterion by which to judge it. What comes first with any style is the development of a structural force that emanates form the material and, as an active principle, permeates the system of the covering. Only three structural forces can be used architecturally . . .
Moreover, there is a kind of invisible pneuma or life deep in this structure:
the secret of the structural dynamics of a material lies in its texture, that is to say, in the law of atomic order. . . The material is aroused and compelled to demonstrate its structural strength once it has been given a form that is appropriate to it and at the same time fits it to perform a space-creating architectural function . . . This structural subjugation of the material is at the root of all architecture. (154)
Note his diatribe against eclecticism on 151 and 152 where he condemns the use of a Classical style to clothe Germanic building, “to give the arcuated system a kind of aesthetic education . . . to use it like a model to be dressed at will. This was a most wretched and foolhardy idea. . . One may ask how the retention of an old style in a new dress could ever turn it into a new one that would embody the essence of both.” This surface problem, or rather the problem of the ontology of the surface, thus finds its first articulation here. Lashing out against the petty attempts to clothe Germanic buildings in the Renaissance with Classical motifs, “which counseled compromise as the source of a new style, also remained tied to the surface of things.” (153)
2. What is the role of “structural force” in his argument against mimesis?
(Or rather, why is structure not a mimetic concept?)
Bötticher, therefore, opposes to surface the notion of “system”: “No one realized that the origin of all specific styles rests on the effect of a new structural principle derived from he material and that this alone makes the formation of a new system of covering space possible and thereby brings forth a new world of art-forms.” (153)
Structural force is a latent condition and leads to certain formal organizations called style (“the secret of the structural dynamics of a material lies in its texture, that is to say the law of atomic order”).
All opinions for or against a particular style have referred only to the outer shell, that is, to the scheme of the buildings’ art-forms, which were considered to be identical with the principle of a style. The true essentials have never been seriously considered; the discussion has never actually turned to the source of the art-forms and of the diversity of styles, namely, the structural principle and material conditions on which each is based. (150)
Structure, as a principle, is not determined by concept of how it ought to appear. How building appear, is a consequence of structural principles.
3. How is style related to material?
Style is certainly related to the concept of force. And this becomes a central concern: “Is it possible for yet another new style to be developed . . . one specific to our generation, in which a strugural force different from that of the other two sytles acs as the principle of its system of covering? And what force would be its active principle?”(157)
When discussing the as-yet-unknown modern Style, Bötticher asserts that the material to be used, given present needs, is iron and that the "structural principle is thus to be adopted from the arcuated system and transformed into a new and hitherto unknown system," i.e., the analysis of function (material and spatial organization) will provide the correct Style which is as yet not clear, visible.
Architecture unlike painting or sculpture does not proceed by imitation.
Architecture must first be victorious in its struggle with the material and, without a model as a guide, must establish a spatial system, before it can enlist sculpture and painting to embellish it with art-forms, these two arts proceed straightaway to the representation of ideas by using familiar analogies taken from the outside world. (155).
In this way, nature has contrived to force the following generation to become more independent and to seek in the still visible traces of the past for its true essence, not by groping around blindly but by consciously identifying and subordinating to its own style all that remains hidden. (155)
In a perceptive fashion, Bötticher has made a fundamentally new claim: design must proceed by the analysis of material: “Every creative generation that has given borth to a new style has had to start from the beginning with this process of mastering the material.” And this is squarely opposed to Q-de-Q’s principle of imitation: “The need to start the process of formal creation from the beginning is an eternal law imposed on any generation destined to create a new style, a law from which it cannot escape.” And indeed, to such an extent, that he also displaces Q-de-Q’s Neo-Platonic conception of Idea: “Although this law is the first felt only as an unconscious urge, it will be clearly comprehended once it becomes a fact: that is to say, once it has passed from mere idea into reality.” (155)
Like Hübsch, Bötticher argues for a non-mimetic code of architectural development. But in Bötticher, it is more explicitly related to the formal terms of architecture’s envelope, the relation between kernform and kunstform is that the "architectural system in its purely structural form is a technical product", it is an "invented form without a model in the outside world", while the decorations that express certain structural conditions, are however based on natural forms.
The issue regarding the relation between the visible in the invisible shows us that in Q-d-Q’s text it is a relation organized or based on representational relations. His Encyclopedia, like all 18th Century projects was part of a table of comparisons. That table simply has no role, at any level of consideration with Hübsch and Bötticher.
If we compare the kinds of analysis that are formed by Hübsch and Bötticher with those of Blondel or Quatremère de Quincy we will immediately recognize that the analyses of the former articulate principles not quite visible in the building itself, or rather, not superimposable to what a building looks like, its "shell" as Bötticher put it. The terms of analysis are rather function, system, condition; that is to say, visible only through analysis, and which are in turn functions of other forces. All discussion of proportion, of orders, of origins (the wooden hut), the translation of wood into stone by the Greeks, etc. has been demolished. These factors, as the illustration of the face and the capital I showed today from Blondel, were all related to each other through a table of visibility and nomenclature that were the products of the Classical episteme. The following is a quote from Vidler's text which has been placed on the seminar shelf : "To talk of building type, then, implied not only its search for original validation, its ultimate restoration to the temple or hut, but also its specific aspect, the form that enabled it to be read as to its purpose at first glance: 'all the different kinds of production which belong to architecture should carry the imprint of the practical intention of each building, each should possess a character which determines the general form and which declares the building for what it is,' wrote Jacques François Blondel in 1747." Character is the transparent and visible meaning of the architecture, "to be read as to its purpose at first glance." (99) Vidler then goes on to identify the model of Botany as taken up by Blondel: "At this state, in the theories of naturalists and of architects, the idea of character was still founded on outward signs: the 'language' of animals like that of buildings was read through their 'physiognomies.'" (101). Clearly, the association to be made here is between neoclassical precepts and the Classical episteme where visibility, expression (language), were simultaneously transparent to one another in the tabular space of representations -- knowledge and the identity of things (that which organized their existence) were transparent to one another.
Karl Gottliebe Wilhelm Bötticher, "The Principles of the Hellenic and Germanic Ways of Building," in Wolfgang Hermann ed., In What Style should we Build? The German Debate on Architectural Style, Santa Monica, 1992;147-161. (Reader)
(Commemorative address on the occasion of Schinkel's birthday (d. 1841), pub'd originally in Allgemeine Bauzeitung 11, 1848)
Summary Remarks: Bötticher does not think that the true expression of Style can be derived from the outer, visible form of buildings, for the essentials of Style are really the structural principles (related to the system of covering) and the material conditions. "Therefore the covering reveals the structural principle of every Style and constitutes the criterion by which to judge it. What comes first with any style is the development of a structural force that emanates form the material and, as an active principle, permeates the system of the covering. Only three structural forces can be used architecturally . . . the secret of the structural dynamics of a material lies in its texture, that is to say, in the law of atomic order. . . The material is aroused and compelled to demonstrate its structural strength once it has been given a form that is appropriate to it and at the same time fits it to perform a space-creating architectural function . . . This structural subjugation of the material is at the root of all architecture." (154) When discussing the as-yet-unknown modern Style, Bötticher asserts that the material to be used, given present needs, is iron and that the "structural principle is thus to be adopted from the arcuated system and transformed into a new and hitherto unknown system," i.e., the analysis of function (material and spatial organization) will provide the correct Style which is as yet not visible. And finally, like Hübsch, Bötticher argues for a non-mimetic code: the relation between kernform and kunstform is that the "architectural system in its purely structural form is a technical product", it is an "invented form without a model in the outside world", while the decorations that express certain structural conditions, are however based on natural forms.
1. What is the origin of form according to Bötticher?
(This should rather be stated as, What is the basis of form?)
Bötticher does not think that the true expression of Style can be derived from the outer, visible form of buildings, for the essentials of Style are really the structural principles (related to the system of covering) and the material conditions.
The essence of any particular style is indicated by the system according to which the covering of space is articulated into parts or structural unit. . . Therefore the covering reveals the structural principle of every Style and constitutes the criterion by which to judge it. What comes first with any style is the development of a structural force that emanates form the material and, as an active principle, permeates the system of the covering. Only three structural forces can be used architecturally . . .
Moreover, there is a kind of invisible pneuma or life deep in this structure:
the secret of the structural dynamics of a material lies in its texture, that is to say, in the law of atomic order. . . The material is aroused and compelled to demonstrate its structural strength once it has been given a form that is appropriate to it and at the same time fits it to perform a space-creating architectural function . . . This structural subjugation of the material is at the root of all architecture. (154)
Note his diatribe against eclecticism on 151 and 152 where he condemns the use of a Classical style to clothe Germanic building, “to give the arcuated system a kind of aesthetic education . . . to use it like a model to be dressed at will. This was a most wretched and foolhardy idea. . . One may ask how the retention of an old style in a new dress could ever turn it into a new one that would embody the essence of both.” This surface problem, or rather the problem of the ontology of the surface, thus finds its first articulation here. Lashing out against the petty attempts to clothe Germanic buildings in the Renaissance with Classical motifs, “which counseled compromise as the source of a new style, also remained tied to the surface of things.” (153)
2. What is the role of “structural force” in his argument against mimesis?
(Or rather, why is structure not a mimetic concept?)
Bötticher, therefore, opposes to surface the notion of “system”: “No one realized that the origin of all specific styles rests on the effect of a new structural principle derived from he material and that this alone makes the formation of a new system of covering space possible and thereby brings forth a new world of art-forms.” (153)
Structural force is a latent condition and leads to certain formal organizations called style (“the secret of the structural dynamics of a material lies in its texture, that is to say the law of atomic order”).
All opinions for or against a particular style have referred only to the outer shell, that is, to the scheme of the buildings’ art-forms, which were considered to be identical with the principle of a style. The true essentials have never been seriously considered; the discussion has never actually turned to the source of the art-forms and of the diversity of styles, namely, the structural principle and material conditions on which each is based. (150)
Structure, as a principle, is not determined by concept of how it ought to appear. How building appear, is a consequence of structural principles.
3. How is style related to material?
Style is certainly related to the concept of force. And this becomes a central concern: “Is it possible for yet another new style to be developed . . . one specific to our generation, in which a strugural force different from that of the other two sytles acs as the principle of its system of covering? And what force would be its active principle?”(157)
When discussing the as-yet-unknown modern Style, Bötticher asserts that the material to be used, given present needs, is iron and that the "structural principle is thus to be adopted from the arcuated system and transformed into a new and hitherto unknown system," i.e., the analysis of function (material and spatial organization) will provide the correct Style which is as yet not clear, visible.
Architecture unlike painting or sculpture does not proceed by imitation.
Architecture must first be victorious in its struggle with the material and, without a model as a guide, must establish a spatial system, before it can enlist sculpture and painting to embellish it with art-forms, these two arts proceed straightaway to the representation of ideas by using familiar analogies taken from the outside world. (155).
In this way, nature has contrived to force the following generation to become more independent and to seek in the still visible traces of the past for its true essence, not by groping around blindly but by consciously identifying and subordinating to its own style all that remains hidden. (155)
In a perceptive fashion, Bötticher has made a fundamentally new claim: design must proceed by the analysis of material: “Every creative generation that has given borth to a new style has had to start from the beginning with this process of mastering the material.” And this is squarely opposed to Q-de-Q’s principle of imitation: “The need to start the process of formal creation from the beginning is an eternal law imposed on any generation destined to create a new style, a law from which it cannot escape.” And indeed, to such an extent, that he also displaces Q-de-Q’s Neo-Platonic conception of Idea: “Although this law is the first felt only as an unconscious urge, it will be clearly comprehended once it becomes a fact: that is to say, once it has passed from mere idea into reality.” (155)
Like Hübsch, Bötticher argues for a non-mimetic code of architectural development. But in Bötticher, it is more explicitly related to the formal terms of architecture’s envelope, the relation between kernform and kunstform is that the "architectural system in its purely structural form is a technical product", it is an "invented form without a model in the outside world", while the decorations that express certain structural conditions, are however based on natural forms.
The issue regarding the relation between the visible in the invisible shows us that in Q-d-Q’s text it is a relation organized or based on representational relations. His Encyclopedia, like all 18th Century projects was part of a table of comparisons. That table simply has no role, at any level of consideration with Hübsch and Bötticher.
If we compare the kinds of analysis that are formed by Hübsch and Bötticher with those of Blondel or Quatremère de Quincy we will immediately recognize that the analyses of the former articulate principles not quite visible in the building itself, or rather, not superimposable to what a building looks like, its "shell" as Bötticher put it. The terms of analysis are rather function, system, condition; that is to say, visible only through analysis, and which are in turn functions of other forces. All discussion of proportion, of orders, of origins (the wooden hut), the translation of wood into stone by the Greeks, etc. has been demolished. These factors, as the illustration of the face and the capital I showed today from Blondel, were all related to each other through a table of visibility and nomenclature that were the products of the Classical episteme. The following is a quote from Vidler's text which has been placed on the seminar shelf : "To talk of building type, then, implied not only its search for original validation, its ultimate restoration to the temple or hut, but also its specific aspect, the form that enabled it to be read as to its purpose at first glance: 'all the different kinds of production which belong to architecture should carry the imprint of the practical intention of each building, each should possess a character which determines the general form and which declares the building for what it is,' wrote Jacques François Blondel in 1747." Character is the transparent and visible meaning of the architecture, "to be read as to its purpose at first glance." (99) Vidler then goes on to identify the model of Botany as taken up by Blondel: "At this state, in the theories of naturalists and of architects, the idea of character was still founded on outward signs: the 'language' of animals like that of buildings was read through their 'physiognomies.'" (101). Clearly, the association to be made here is between neoclassical precepts and the Classical episteme where visibility, expression (language), were simultaneously transparent to one another in the tabular space of representations -- knowledge and the identity of things (that which organized their existence) were transparent to one another.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Notes on Quatramere de Quincy and Hubsch
Here are more remarks on Hubsch, following an examination of Quatramere de Quincy who we went over last class
I. A.-C. Quatramére de Quincy on Imitation and Type
1. How does the term “imitation” function in Quatramére de Quincy’s text in relation to the term “model”?
Primarily, imitation is the basis of identity and meaning in architecture. But imitation corresponds to what he calls a “model” (e.g. the “principles contained in the rustic hut”). Classical architecture acquires its identity (Type) through the conservation of its relation to Nature as the model. Nature is understood here as a set of immutable laws. The very first statement is, “Architecture is the art of building following determined proportions and rules.” And then, a little later, “proportions and rules determined and fixed by nature and taste.”(27). The bridge between the rational expression of the primitive hut and Classical architecture is carpentry. “We have already shown that stone, in copying itself, or to put it better, in copying nothing, has offered no form to art, no variety to the eye, no relation to the spirit.” (30) (The reference is to Egyptian architecture).
Carpentry, as we shall make clear, has incontestably served as the model to Greek architecture; and one must admit that of the three models that nature can present to the art, carpentry is without doubt the most perfect and finest of all. (28)
. . . [This] imitation of carpentry or of hut is one of the principle causes of pleasure elicited by architecture; and that one could not negate this, either by changing or distorting the spirit, without striking at the laws of Nature and of verisimilitude, and destroying in us all the impressions of pleasure. (29)
(The primitive hut was, as you know, introduced by Laugier and taken up by most theorists in the 18th century and served as the archetype of building. The relation between building and Type ensured the communication of character. As Jacques François Blondel wrote: “all the different kinds of production which belong to architecture should carry the imprint of the particular intention of each building, each should possess a character which determines the general form and which declares the building for what it is."”(1749).)
Imitation is not the imitation of a thing, but rather a set of principles and truths. The primitive hut, in this instance is a set of moral lessons from which architecture must draw inspiration. However, the Neo-Platonist argument that he uses, that the highest reality belongs to principles, Ideas, and Forms, only defers the criticism of “imitation” as a principle of design that had begun to emerge after the turn of the century. And this is clear by Quatramére de Quincy’s evasion of the particular details of “model.”
What does it matter, that one copies the cabin more or less materially, provided that one copies the simple and true maxims that direct its construction? Nature, without doubt, has not made the cabin, but Nature has directed man in his formation, and man, guided by an instinct, coarse if one wishes, but sure, and by a sentiment which in early times could not mislead, has transmitted to it the true impressions of Nature. The art cannot, and must not abandon this original imprint . . . (30)
Quatramére de Quincy follows this diatribe with another, denouncing those who have corrupted or rejected the model by rearranging its syntax (one of whom is Ledoux). “They have shown us that one can no longer abandon the real or fictive imitation of the cabin without abandoning at the same time the principles of which it is the demonstration; and that one cannot deny these principles without abjuring at the same time Nature who dictated them and imprinted them there by her hand.
In rejecting, if one so wishes, the cabin, one rejects its imitation, but one also denies the following maxims:
That the strong must carry the week.
That solidity must be real and apparent . . .
[etc.]
If these maxims are incontestable, what is the difference whether the real or imaginary existence of the cabin is true or false? It is no less the axiom, the theorem of all truths: and who would dare proscribe its imitation, if it has become a visible rule, and a material and sensible example of the principles which constitute architecture? (31)
We are given to understand then that architecture is not an art of building unless it is an art of imitation. And this term, once again, seeks its equilibrium according to a “general order” (the words are Quatramére de Quincy’s), but one that functions according to representation.
Such then was the progress of architecture. In assimilating itself again to another model, it succeeded in finding a much more perfect one than the first. It is pointless to note that it never moulded itself materially on its model: it only made an intellectual copy of it . . . It is never form that architecture appropriated to itself, but the relations, the reasons which are contained there.
Not only is architecture thus the art of imitation (of principles, of Nature’s artifice) but it is also the most free to expand therein.
It is in this way that architecture, generalizing more and more the idea of its model, has succeeded in extending the sphere of imitation. It is not only the cabin from which it comes, nor man on which it is modeled, it is Nature in its entirety which has become the type of its imitation.”
Thus architecture creates also its own model: “Its model being the order of Nature, it exists everywhere, without being visible anywhere.” But this does not mean that it is invisible. On the contrary, it means that the order of Nature is not a thing but a set of principles, laws. “If then architecture is an art of imitation, it is not by having conserved, in embellishing them, the grotesque forms that necessity imprinted on the dwellings of the first men; but it is because it imitates Nature in the laws.”
Does one not see here a constant deferral of terms? Architecture, Nature, Principles, Reasons, Laws, Harmony, Proportion, etc. The meaning of these terms hangs on the ability to keep their chain intact. One is simply an expression of the other.
2. How does Quatramére de Quincy relate the idea of the organization of being to expression?
Organization is none other than the laws of order dictated by the Idea of Nature. Being just is this order and expresses itself in character. Here we are lead through another series of representations and the being of architecture is nowhere to be found but in this series. It exists as a transcendental value, an Idea, the premier examples of which are the human body and architecture. And, in turn, the human body and architecture constantly express this being as a series of representations.
This primitive model, of which you are only the copyist, will turn you from all those eccentricities of ensemble and detail which attenuate and enfeeble the appearance and effect of buildings: it will preserve you from these equivocal and mongrel forms . . . The art of characterization “is to make evident by material forms the intellectual qualities and the moral ideas which can express themselves in building. (34)
But again, this is related to the issue of imitation through Type. Type, through which architecture assumes its identity, is a kind of Idea (hence the neo-Platonism):
From this imitation, well proven by the reality of the model, by the necessity of the copy, . . . must rigorously follow the rules and laws prescribed for it by the model it has adopted . . . It is only then in recollecting itself continually before its model, in tracing itself . . . on the object of its imitation, that the art can hope to please.
But it is an idea only insofar as it is subject to the law of endless representation:
This type of which we must never lose sight, will be the inflexible rule which will reform all the practices . . .this precious type is in some way an enchanted mirror whose look the perverted and corrupted art cannot sustain, and which in recalling it to its origin, restores it to its former virtue. (32)
3. What laws relate the visible to the invisible in Quatramére de Quincy text?
Nature’s laws, of course, relate the visible to the invisible. But in reality, it is the law of successive representations. What is invisible is the Idea, Nature. Not because it is invisible in and of itself, but rather because it transcends the visible, organizes it, relates its terms one to another in an extended chain of meaning and reference. Or rather, it is invisible because it is the foundation of all that is visible. A foundation that because it is at once everywhere -- it is a set of laws -- and at the same time nowhere in particular. Being is character, but it is only character insofar as character too is part of this great chain of representation: “Character signifies a mark or figure traced on stone, metal, paper or any other material . . . in order to be the distinctive sign of something.” Character is “nothing but the sign by which Nature inscribes its essence on objects, its distinctive qualities, its relative properties, indeed all that could prevent mistaking it with another. (34)
Or rather, these are the laws of resemblance and similitude without which Idea, Nature, Image, Character, etc. would cease to function as identical and meaningful. Under “Imitation,” Quatramére de Quincy writes: “Thus to take nature as a model is to imitate her by giving oneself in certain works of art the same rules that nature follows herself, by investigating her intentions in the formation of creatures.” But again, to imitate her is not to imitate her appearance, but rather her “in her action,” in her organization, in the chain of representations.
Thus, despite Quatramére de Quincy’s ambivalence toward representation and similitude concerning the object of design, he nonetheless must endorse its implications: buildings must exhibit character,
the art of characterizing, that is to say, of rendering sensible by material forms the intellectual qualities and moral ideas which can be expressed in buildings; or of making known by means of the accord and suitability of all the constituent parts of a building, its nature, propriety, use, destination; this art, I say, is perhaps, of all the secrets of architecture, the fines and most difficult to develop and to understand; this happy talent of feeling and making felt the physiognomy proper to each monument, this sure and delicate refinement which makes perceptible the different nuances of buildings that seem at first unsusceptible to any characteristic distinctions; this wise and discreet use of different manners of expression, which are like the ‘tones’ of architecture; the adroit mixture of the signs that his art is able to employ to speak to the eyes and the mind; this precise and fine touch . . .
General comments on the text.
Note that each of the terms introduced by Quatramére de Quincy, Imitation, Idea, Type, Character, Architecture all stand in some type of transparent and representational relation to each other. As such, one finds very little in terms of a discussion regarding design method. Or rather, method amounts to ensuring that architecture will make these relations transparently available to each other.
Thus the ontology of architecture, what it is in its being insofar as it exists, depends on this transparent relation between an original set of truths, founded on Nature, and the form of architecture. The form of architecture, however, is simply the last in a chain of representations where explicit structure is manifest. But it is manifest meaningfully only to the extent that it also touches all the way back toward an original model that expresses Nature’s laws of organization.
If analysis has any meaning here, it is the analysis of the representative contents of architecture as a series of signs. True, the basis of representation is the Model, Nature’s “laws.” As such it is also immaterial. But there is no such thing as the invisible in Quatramére de Quincy’s text.
Architecture, Carpentry, Idea, Character, Model, Type, Imitation: what kind of organization of terms is this? Or rather, what is the ontological principle of their classification as though they provide us with the species of concepts from which architecture descends? Idea is to Ideal as Nature is to Laws. For every term there is an explicit horizontal correspondence to another term. And each in its turn is representative of some quality inhering in the latter. Architecture is a material thing, but its art lies not in its materiality, but rather its expression of certain general laws, founded on Reason and Nature. The embodiment of these laws is general and specific, hence the format of this body of knowledge as based on the encyclopedia.
II. Hübsch
Under Hübsch and Bötticher invisibility has another domain, another principle, another truth. It has another being, another ontology.
In this text he makes two claims: art has already abandoned the idea of the imitation of Classical styles, and the imitation of classical styles carries with it the assumption of universal truths such as the concept of beauty. Design, however, is not a function of beauty . . .
1. Why does Hübsch reject “imitation” as a principle of design?
Hübsch did not reject Greek architecture, but reinterpreted its role in history and emphasized that contemporary architecture’s relation to historical paradigms must be fundamentally reconstructed. If there was a truth embodied in Classical architecture, it was a truth based not on the appearance but rather on a system of certain types of relationships. And the latter was available only through analytical reflection. “I have become convinced that in order to arrive at a proper standpoint from which to make fundamental judgments [of architecture], one must depart from all contemporary notions of absolute beauty, order, and the like, and retain pure function alone.” We will find that this term takes on greater and greater emphasis during the 19th Century.
The imitation of a classical ideal, he notes, is often referred to as a concept of beauty. But this requires a principle, and neither the concept of taste or beauty can perform this function – they are too subjective. Only an investigation of practical necessity will yield “principles.” (see p. 64) He has thus invoked a major challenge to Neo-Classical precepts of design: “A building with a sham façade but with an interior that conforms exactly to its use may sooner find admirers than a building with a so-called pure façade for the sake of which the whole interior is either too high or too low and whose function is everywhere impaired by Greek proportions.” (see 82).
Whoever looks at architecture primarily from its decorative aspect and perhaps asks himself why he likes on form of leaf work on a capital better than another will easily despair of the possibility of establishing reliable principles. Yet whoever starts his investigations from the point of view of practical necessity will find a secure base. Now, since the size and arrangement of every building is conditioned by its purpose, which is the main reason for its existence, and since its continued existence depends on the physical properties of the material and on the resulting arrangement and formation of the individual parts, it is obvious that two criteria of functionality – namely, fitness for purpose (commodity) and lasting existence (solidity) – determines the size and basic form of the essential parts of every building. These formative factors, derived from function, are surely as objective and as clear as they could possibly be. (64)
Architectural form, in other words, is the consequence of the property of material, the refinement of structural techniques and the adjustment of the whole to the specific demands of climate, social systems, and economic structure.
2. What is the object of Hübsch’s analysis and what does that analysis reveal? Or rather, what kinds of analysis does he employ and how doe they relate the invisible (function) to the visible (Style)?
The object of Hübsch’s analysis is, in a way, change or transformation in the practical and material contexts in which buildings are produced. As such what is analyzed is not a model, or Idea, but rather a series of material systems. Two of the most important, historically, of course are the trabeated system and the vaulting system. But this is also linked to general material systems. (see p. 68) “The principle formative factors [of form in architecture] that can be deduced a priori as well as confirmed historically, are climate and building material.” (67). Hübsch then goes on to identify how the particular material qualities lead to the development of trabeated and vaulted constructions. Thus there is an argument also about the function of material. It is clear from this that there is no historically original model as such. Hence no analysis of an original type, model, or form. The analysis, then is quintessentially, one of organic structure and system:
“Having established the basis of the new style in every respect, it remains to define more precisely the form of the architectural elements. For this we turn once again to history in order to observe the gradually changing forms of vaulting and how they influenced every element. We shall trace this development up to the time when all reminiscences of ancient architecture disappeared and the form of each element was derived in an organic way from the vaulting, a stage finally reached in medieval architecture.” (85)
(See also 93: “let us learn from the one undisputed merit of the Spitzbogenstil: the way in which its forms, down to the smallest detail, derive in a consistent and organic manner from the construction of the vault . . .”)
Hübsch’s “object” of analysis, the material system, thus stands in no representational relation to the analysis itself. In Quatramére de Quincy, in contrast, the object of analysis was “reflected” by the analysis itself in the form of Idea.
3. What is the importance of “style” according Hübsch’s text?
Style is not the expression of character as some already known meaning, identity, or Idea (as it is in Quatramére de Quincy). Instead, it is based on the “essential parts of building” (of which he gives an account on p. 66) Style is based on the function of its parts in relation to one another. Hübsch places great emphasis on function, the formative factors in style derive from function. The essence of form as a condition of style, therefore, is a non-issue, there is no criteria for it. Only those essential parts of a building are the elements of style. There is not original form (no primitive hut model); there are only formative factors. Structurally there are only two basic conditions: the trabeated and the vaulted. And these change and develop according to internal dynamic laws, over time. There are four factors (which derive from function) in the formation of style, and the ones that we require today are opposite those that were used in Ancient Greece. The superimposition of Greco-Roman principles on architecture is simply just equal to decoration. On page 66 he essentially takes the romance out of style (and for good reason) and lists a series of parts of building that correspond functionally, structurally, programmatically in relation to each other and then says: “These are the essential parts of a building. They relate to the most basic task of architecture and must therefore be regarded as the elements of style.”
History is a dynamical process and it is in that process that we can find the development of style. Or rather, style is a function not of mimesis, but historical forces – history is not a representational foundation:
If we wish therefore to attain a style that has the same qualities as the building of other nations that are accepted as beautiful and are much praised by us, then this cannot arise from the past but only from the present state of natural formative factors – that is: first, from our usual building material; second, from the present level of technostatic experience; third, from the kind of protection that buildings need in our climate in order to last; and fourth, from the more general nature of our needs based on climate and perhaps in part on culture. (71).
After describing this particular history in Germany, Hübsch thus concludes: “Therefore, the formative factors that condition today’s architecture are completely different – almost diametrically opposed to those that affected the Greek style . . .”
If, again, we could say there was something like “analysis” in Quatramére de Quincy’s text, it is not anything like what we find in Hübsch’s. And the reason is that both the mode of analysis, its method, and its object have shifted. And within this shift, representation, has lost its ability to account for the order of the world, of architecture, and nature. Surely, Hübsch makes no direct claim to unravel the invisible. But is it not the case that it is not longer the visible order of nature, the law of nature, is consonant with architectural form. Architectural form, will cease to represent. Organic development and function are related to an entirely different sphere, and it is Bötticher who spells out for us that this sphere, this sphere of activity rather than Ideas, Forms, Principles, is hidden, invisible, and is the underlying cause of things.
I. A.-C. Quatramére de Quincy on Imitation and Type
1. How does the term “imitation” function in Quatramére de Quincy’s text in relation to the term “model”?
Primarily, imitation is the basis of identity and meaning in architecture. But imitation corresponds to what he calls a “model” (e.g. the “principles contained in the rustic hut”). Classical architecture acquires its identity (Type) through the conservation of its relation to Nature as the model. Nature is understood here as a set of immutable laws. The very first statement is, “Architecture is the art of building following determined proportions and rules.” And then, a little later, “proportions and rules determined and fixed by nature and taste.”(27). The bridge between the rational expression of the primitive hut and Classical architecture is carpentry. “We have already shown that stone, in copying itself, or to put it better, in copying nothing, has offered no form to art, no variety to the eye, no relation to the spirit.” (30) (The reference is to Egyptian architecture).
Carpentry, as we shall make clear, has incontestably served as the model to Greek architecture; and one must admit that of the three models that nature can present to the art, carpentry is without doubt the most perfect and finest of all. (28)
. . . [This] imitation of carpentry or of hut is one of the principle causes of pleasure elicited by architecture; and that one could not negate this, either by changing or distorting the spirit, without striking at the laws of Nature and of verisimilitude, and destroying in us all the impressions of pleasure. (29)
(The primitive hut was, as you know, introduced by Laugier and taken up by most theorists in the 18th century and served as the archetype of building. The relation between building and Type ensured the communication of character. As Jacques François Blondel wrote: “all the different kinds of production which belong to architecture should carry the imprint of the particular intention of each building, each should possess a character which determines the general form and which declares the building for what it is."”(1749).)
Imitation is not the imitation of a thing, but rather a set of principles and truths. The primitive hut, in this instance is a set of moral lessons from which architecture must draw inspiration. However, the Neo-Platonist argument that he uses, that the highest reality belongs to principles, Ideas, and Forms, only defers the criticism of “imitation” as a principle of design that had begun to emerge after the turn of the century. And this is clear by Quatramére de Quincy’s evasion of the particular details of “model.”
What does it matter, that one copies the cabin more or less materially, provided that one copies the simple and true maxims that direct its construction? Nature, without doubt, has not made the cabin, but Nature has directed man in his formation, and man, guided by an instinct, coarse if one wishes, but sure, and by a sentiment which in early times could not mislead, has transmitted to it the true impressions of Nature. The art cannot, and must not abandon this original imprint . . . (30)
Quatramére de Quincy follows this diatribe with another, denouncing those who have corrupted or rejected the model by rearranging its syntax (one of whom is Ledoux). “They have shown us that one can no longer abandon the real or fictive imitation of the cabin without abandoning at the same time the principles of which it is the demonstration; and that one cannot deny these principles without abjuring at the same time Nature who dictated them and imprinted them there by her hand.
In rejecting, if one so wishes, the cabin, one rejects its imitation, but one also denies the following maxims:
That the strong must carry the week.
That solidity must be real and apparent . . .
[etc.]
If these maxims are incontestable, what is the difference whether the real or imaginary existence of the cabin is true or false? It is no less the axiom, the theorem of all truths: and who would dare proscribe its imitation, if it has become a visible rule, and a material and sensible example of the principles which constitute architecture? (31)
We are given to understand then that architecture is not an art of building unless it is an art of imitation. And this term, once again, seeks its equilibrium according to a “general order” (the words are Quatramére de Quincy’s), but one that functions according to representation.
Such then was the progress of architecture. In assimilating itself again to another model, it succeeded in finding a much more perfect one than the first. It is pointless to note that it never moulded itself materially on its model: it only made an intellectual copy of it . . . It is never form that architecture appropriated to itself, but the relations, the reasons which are contained there.
Not only is architecture thus the art of imitation (of principles, of Nature’s artifice) but it is also the most free to expand therein.
It is in this way that architecture, generalizing more and more the idea of its model, has succeeded in extending the sphere of imitation. It is not only the cabin from which it comes, nor man on which it is modeled, it is Nature in its entirety which has become the type of its imitation.”
Thus architecture creates also its own model: “Its model being the order of Nature, it exists everywhere, without being visible anywhere.” But this does not mean that it is invisible. On the contrary, it means that the order of Nature is not a thing but a set of principles, laws. “If then architecture is an art of imitation, it is not by having conserved, in embellishing them, the grotesque forms that necessity imprinted on the dwellings of the first men; but it is because it imitates Nature in the laws.”
Does one not see here a constant deferral of terms? Architecture, Nature, Principles, Reasons, Laws, Harmony, Proportion, etc. The meaning of these terms hangs on the ability to keep their chain intact. One is simply an expression of the other.
2. How does Quatramére de Quincy relate the idea of the organization of being to expression?
Organization is none other than the laws of order dictated by the Idea of Nature. Being just is this order and expresses itself in character. Here we are lead through another series of representations and the being of architecture is nowhere to be found but in this series. It exists as a transcendental value, an Idea, the premier examples of which are the human body and architecture. And, in turn, the human body and architecture constantly express this being as a series of representations.
This primitive model, of which you are only the copyist, will turn you from all those eccentricities of ensemble and detail which attenuate and enfeeble the appearance and effect of buildings: it will preserve you from these equivocal and mongrel forms . . . The art of characterization “is to make evident by material forms the intellectual qualities and the moral ideas which can express themselves in building. (34)
But again, this is related to the issue of imitation through Type. Type, through which architecture assumes its identity, is a kind of Idea (hence the neo-Platonism):
From this imitation, well proven by the reality of the model, by the necessity of the copy, . . . must rigorously follow the rules and laws prescribed for it by the model it has adopted . . . It is only then in recollecting itself continually before its model, in tracing itself . . . on the object of its imitation, that the art can hope to please.
But it is an idea only insofar as it is subject to the law of endless representation:
This type of which we must never lose sight, will be the inflexible rule which will reform all the practices . . .this precious type is in some way an enchanted mirror whose look the perverted and corrupted art cannot sustain, and which in recalling it to its origin, restores it to its former virtue. (32)
3. What laws relate the visible to the invisible in Quatramére de Quincy text?
Nature’s laws, of course, relate the visible to the invisible. But in reality, it is the law of successive representations. What is invisible is the Idea, Nature. Not because it is invisible in and of itself, but rather because it transcends the visible, organizes it, relates its terms one to another in an extended chain of meaning and reference. Or rather, it is invisible because it is the foundation of all that is visible. A foundation that because it is at once everywhere -- it is a set of laws -- and at the same time nowhere in particular. Being is character, but it is only character insofar as character too is part of this great chain of representation: “Character signifies a mark or figure traced on stone, metal, paper or any other material . . . in order to be the distinctive sign of something.” Character is “nothing but the sign by which Nature inscribes its essence on objects, its distinctive qualities, its relative properties, indeed all that could prevent mistaking it with another. (34)
Or rather, these are the laws of resemblance and similitude without which Idea, Nature, Image, Character, etc. would cease to function as identical and meaningful. Under “Imitation,” Quatramére de Quincy writes: “Thus to take nature as a model is to imitate her by giving oneself in certain works of art the same rules that nature follows herself, by investigating her intentions in the formation of creatures.” But again, to imitate her is not to imitate her appearance, but rather her “in her action,” in her organization, in the chain of representations.
Thus, despite Quatramére de Quincy’s ambivalence toward representation and similitude concerning the object of design, he nonetheless must endorse its implications: buildings must exhibit character,
the art of characterizing, that is to say, of rendering sensible by material forms the intellectual qualities and moral ideas which can be expressed in buildings; or of making known by means of the accord and suitability of all the constituent parts of a building, its nature, propriety, use, destination; this art, I say, is perhaps, of all the secrets of architecture, the fines and most difficult to develop and to understand; this happy talent of feeling and making felt the physiognomy proper to each monument, this sure and delicate refinement which makes perceptible the different nuances of buildings that seem at first unsusceptible to any characteristic distinctions; this wise and discreet use of different manners of expression, which are like the ‘tones’ of architecture; the adroit mixture of the signs that his art is able to employ to speak to the eyes and the mind; this precise and fine touch . . .
General comments on the text.
Note that each of the terms introduced by Quatramére de Quincy, Imitation, Idea, Type, Character, Architecture all stand in some type of transparent and representational relation to each other. As such, one finds very little in terms of a discussion regarding design method. Or rather, method amounts to ensuring that architecture will make these relations transparently available to each other.
Thus the ontology of architecture, what it is in its being insofar as it exists, depends on this transparent relation between an original set of truths, founded on Nature, and the form of architecture. The form of architecture, however, is simply the last in a chain of representations where explicit structure is manifest. But it is manifest meaningfully only to the extent that it also touches all the way back toward an original model that expresses Nature’s laws of organization.
If analysis has any meaning here, it is the analysis of the representative contents of architecture as a series of signs. True, the basis of representation is the Model, Nature’s “laws.” As such it is also immaterial. But there is no such thing as the invisible in Quatramére de Quincy’s text.
Architecture, Carpentry, Idea, Character, Model, Type, Imitation: what kind of organization of terms is this? Or rather, what is the ontological principle of their classification as though they provide us with the species of concepts from which architecture descends? Idea is to Ideal as Nature is to Laws. For every term there is an explicit horizontal correspondence to another term. And each in its turn is representative of some quality inhering in the latter. Architecture is a material thing, but its art lies not in its materiality, but rather its expression of certain general laws, founded on Reason and Nature. The embodiment of these laws is general and specific, hence the format of this body of knowledge as based on the encyclopedia.
II. Hübsch
Under Hübsch and Bötticher invisibility has another domain, another principle, another truth. It has another being, another ontology.
In this text he makes two claims: art has already abandoned the idea of the imitation of Classical styles, and the imitation of classical styles carries with it the assumption of universal truths such as the concept of beauty. Design, however, is not a function of beauty . . .
1. Why does Hübsch reject “imitation” as a principle of design?
Hübsch did not reject Greek architecture, but reinterpreted its role in history and emphasized that contemporary architecture’s relation to historical paradigms must be fundamentally reconstructed. If there was a truth embodied in Classical architecture, it was a truth based not on the appearance but rather on a system of certain types of relationships. And the latter was available only through analytical reflection. “I have become convinced that in order to arrive at a proper standpoint from which to make fundamental judgments [of architecture], one must depart from all contemporary notions of absolute beauty, order, and the like, and retain pure function alone.” We will find that this term takes on greater and greater emphasis during the 19th Century.
The imitation of a classical ideal, he notes, is often referred to as a concept of beauty. But this requires a principle, and neither the concept of taste or beauty can perform this function – they are too subjective. Only an investigation of practical necessity will yield “principles.” (see p. 64) He has thus invoked a major challenge to Neo-Classical precepts of design: “A building with a sham façade but with an interior that conforms exactly to its use may sooner find admirers than a building with a so-called pure façade for the sake of which the whole interior is either too high or too low and whose function is everywhere impaired by Greek proportions.” (see 82).
Whoever looks at architecture primarily from its decorative aspect and perhaps asks himself why he likes on form of leaf work on a capital better than another will easily despair of the possibility of establishing reliable principles. Yet whoever starts his investigations from the point of view of practical necessity will find a secure base. Now, since the size and arrangement of every building is conditioned by its purpose, which is the main reason for its existence, and since its continued existence depends on the physical properties of the material and on the resulting arrangement and formation of the individual parts, it is obvious that two criteria of functionality – namely, fitness for purpose (commodity) and lasting existence (solidity) – determines the size and basic form of the essential parts of every building. These formative factors, derived from function, are surely as objective and as clear as they could possibly be. (64)
Architectural form, in other words, is the consequence of the property of material, the refinement of structural techniques and the adjustment of the whole to the specific demands of climate, social systems, and economic structure.
2. What is the object of Hübsch’s analysis and what does that analysis reveal? Or rather, what kinds of analysis does he employ and how doe they relate the invisible (function) to the visible (Style)?
The object of Hübsch’s analysis is, in a way, change or transformation in the practical and material contexts in which buildings are produced. As such what is analyzed is not a model, or Idea, but rather a series of material systems. Two of the most important, historically, of course are the trabeated system and the vaulting system. But this is also linked to general material systems. (see p. 68) “The principle formative factors [of form in architecture] that can be deduced a priori as well as confirmed historically, are climate and building material.” (67). Hübsch then goes on to identify how the particular material qualities lead to the development of trabeated and vaulted constructions. Thus there is an argument also about the function of material. It is clear from this that there is no historically original model as such. Hence no analysis of an original type, model, or form. The analysis, then is quintessentially, one of organic structure and system:
“Having established the basis of the new style in every respect, it remains to define more precisely the form of the architectural elements. For this we turn once again to history in order to observe the gradually changing forms of vaulting and how they influenced every element. We shall trace this development up to the time when all reminiscences of ancient architecture disappeared and the form of each element was derived in an organic way from the vaulting, a stage finally reached in medieval architecture.” (85)
(See also 93: “let us learn from the one undisputed merit of the Spitzbogenstil: the way in which its forms, down to the smallest detail, derive in a consistent and organic manner from the construction of the vault . . .”)
Hübsch’s “object” of analysis, the material system, thus stands in no representational relation to the analysis itself. In Quatramére de Quincy, in contrast, the object of analysis was “reflected” by the analysis itself in the form of Idea.
3. What is the importance of “style” according Hübsch’s text?
Style is not the expression of character as some already known meaning, identity, or Idea (as it is in Quatramére de Quincy). Instead, it is based on the “essential parts of building” (of which he gives an account on p. 66) Style is based on the function of its parts in relation to one another. Hübsch places great emphasis on function, the formative factors in style derive from function. The essence of form as a condition of style, therefore, is a non-issue, there is no criteria for it. Only those essential parts of a building are the elements of style. There is not original form (no primitive hut model); there are only formative factors. Structurally there are only two basic conditions: the trabeated and the vaulted. And these change and develop according to internal dynamic laws, over time. There are four factors (which derive from function) in the formation of style, and the ones that we require today are opposite those that were used in Ancient Greece. The superimposition of Greco-Roman principles on architecture is simply just equal to decoration. On page 66 he essentially takes the romance out of style (and for good reason) and lists a series of parts of building that correspond functionally, structurally, programmatically in relation to each other and then says: “These are the essential parts of a building. They relate to the most basic task of architecture and must therefore be regarded as the elements of style.”
History is a dynamical process and it is in that process that we can find the development of style. Or rather, style is a function not of mimesis, but historical forces – history is not a representational foundation:
If we wish therefore to attain a style that has the same qualities as the building of other nations that are accepted as beautiful and are much praised by us, then this cannot arise from the past but only from the present state of natural formative factors – that is: first, from our usual building material; second, from the present level of technostatic experience; third, from the kind of protection that buildings need in our climate in order to last; and fourth, from the more general nature of our needs based on climate and perhaps in part on culture. (71).
After describing this particular history in Germany, Hübsch thus concludes: “Therefore, the formative factors that condition today’s architecture are completely different – almost diametrically opposed to those that affected the Greek style . . .”
If, again, we could say there was something like “analysis” in Quatramére de Quincy’s text, it is not anything like what we find in Hübsch’s. And the reason is that both the mode of analysis, its method, and its object have shifted. And within this shift, representation, has lost its ability to account for the order of the world, of architecture, and nature. Surely, Hübsch makes no direct claim to unravel the invisible. But is it not the case that it is not longer the visible order of nature, the law of nature, is consonant with architectural form. Architectural form, will cease to represent. Organic development and function are related to an entirely different sphere, and it is Bötticher who spells out for us that this sphere, this sphere of activity rather than Ideas, Forms, Principles, is hidden, invisible, and is the underlying cause of things.
Notes on Hubsch
Here are a series of notes on H. Hubsch
For more on Hubsch see Bergdoll below
General remarks on Hübsch (Barry Bergdoll, "Archaeology vs. History: Heinrich Hübsch's Critique of Neoclassicism and the Beginnings of Historicism in German Architectural Theory," The Oxford Art Journal, 5:2, 1983; 3-12.):
Hubsch refuses Neoclassical doctrine of imitation as a principle of design: Vitruvius is not the model. Style is rather the outcome of universal laws of materials and construction with the particular demands of climate and socio-economic structure. Truth of style derived through analytic reflection. But analysis of historical evidence is from a radically different set of hypotheses. Previously, style in architecture corresponds to ideals of beauty located in original architectural productions (Greece) which in turn were based on an imitation of nature (primitive hut). Hübsch argued that the history of architecture is rather a dynamic system (not a correlation of original truths or models and their examplars). So, Hübsch rejects both doctrine of imitation as well as belief in transcendental ideal (Ideology as the last of the philosophies of the Classical episteme) as the main factors in architecture. The question then is: what is a generative factor for style? This depends on Hübsch's analysis of two things, the needs of the present moment, and the historical organic development of the past. Hübsch is thus probably the first to speak of the new style in architecture (its possibility) in terms of an analysis of the past. The vault, for example, has an evolved history: it is not just an ideal form. He uses the concept, therefore, of active historical forces. "Thus, Hübsch's history is analytical, tracing the vault's development in Early Christian, Byzantine, and even Romanesque architecture in order to see how a structural principle generates a new style. Functional and material determinism, the formative influence of climate, and a belief in technical progress are the analytical determinants of Hübsch's history. Aesthetics, he maintained, are sophistry." (p. 10). "Hübsch proceeds to outline the requirements of the modern period: large spaces and consequent broad roof spans, generously sized windows and entrances, and so on. In short, he creates a conceptual "scaffold" to describe the new architecture functionally without specifying style or formal appearance." [ I.e., the analysis will lead to the correct visible form. But what are the analyses of, ontologically speaking? Are they ideas? Objects? Well, they are systems, the nature of which is visible only through analysis.]
Summary Remarks on Hübsch's text, In What Style Should We Build?, (manifesto for a meeting of Nazarene artists at the Dürer festival in Nuremberg, 1828. (Reader).
Hübsch places great emphasis on function, the formative factors in style derive from function. The essence of form as a condition of style, therefore, is a non-issue, there is no criteria for it. Only those essential parts of a building are the elements of style. There is not original form (no primitive hut model); there are only formative factors. Structurally there are only two basic conditions: the trabeated and the vaulted. And these change and develop according to internal dynamic laws, over time. There are four factors (which derive from function) in the formation of style, and the ones that we require today are opposite those that were used in Ancient Greece. The superimposition of Greco-Roman principles on architecture is simply just equal to decoration.
Questions: What is the analysis of, what kinds of analysis does he employ, and how do they relate the invisible (function) to the visible (Style)?
For more on Hubsch see Bergdoll below
General remarks on Hübsch (Barry Bergdoll, "Archaeology vs. History: Heinrich Hübsch's Critique of Neoclassicism and the Beginnings of Historicism in German Architectural Theory," The Oxford Art Journal, 5:2, 1983; 3-12.):
Hubsch refuses Neoclassical doctrine of imitation as a principle of design: Vitruvius is not the model. Style is rather the outcome of universal laws of materials and construction with the particular demands of climate and socio-economic structure. Truth of style derived through analytic reflection. But analysis of historical evidence is from a radically different set of hypotheses. Previously, style in architecture corresponds to ideals of beauty located in original architectural productions (Greece) which in turn were based on an imitation of nature (primitive hut). Hübsch argued that the history of architecture is rather a dynamic system (not a correlation of original truths or models and their examplars). So, Hübsch rejects both doctrine of imitation as well as belief in transcendental ideal (Ideology as the last of the philosophies of the Classical episteme) as the main factors in architecture. The question then is: what is a generative factor for style? This depends on Hübsch's analysis of two things, the needs of the present moment, and the historical organic development of the past. Hübsch is thus probably the first to speak of the new style in architecture (its possibility) in terms of an analysis of the past. The vault, for example, has an evolved history: it is not just an ideal form. He uses the concept, therefore, of active historical forces. "Thus, Hübsch's history is analytical, tracing the vault's development in Early Christian, Byzantine, and even Romanesque architecture in order to see how a structural principle generates a new style. Functional and material determinism, the formative influence of climate, and a belief in technical progress are the analytical determinants of Hübsch's history. Aesthetics, he maintained, are sophistry." (p. 10). "Hübsch proceeds to outline the requirements of the modern period: large spaces and consequent broad roof spans, generously sized windows and entrances, and so on. In short, he creates a conceptual "scaffold" to describe the new architecture functionally without specifying style or formal appearance." [ I.e., the analysis will lead to the correct visible form. But what are the analyses of, ontologically speaking? Are they ideas? Objects? Well, they are systems, the nature of which is visible only through analysis.]
Summary Remarks on Hübsch's text, In What Style Should We Build?, (manifesto for a meeting of Nazarene artists at the Dürer festival in Nuremberg, 1828. (Reader).
Hübsch places great emphasis on function, the formative factors in style derive from function. The essence of form as a condition of style, therefore, is a non-issue, there is no criteria for it. Only those essential parts of a building are the elements of style. There is not original form (no primitive hut model); there are only formative factors. Structurally there are only two basic conditions: the trabeated and the vaulted. And these change and develop according to internal dynamic laws, over time. There are four factors (which derive from function) in the formation of style, and the ones that we require today are opposite those that were used in Ancient Greece. The superimposition of Greco-Roman principles on architecture is simply just equal to decoration.
Questions: What is the analysis of, what kinds of analysis does he employ, and how do they relate the invisible (function) to the visible (Style)?
Foucault and the Order of Things
What we are given to understand by Foucault is that in the Classical episteme, analysis was organized in the form of a table, a taxonomy of visible characteristics and names; these were transparent to one another. For whatever reason, there is a transformation (Foucault wants to suspend the revolution in ideas thesis, teleological thesis, etc., although he does obliquely refer to external events, changes in the form of labour, etc., he does not, however want to posit these as the cause of the epistemic ruptures per se). Between the late 18th and the early 19th cent. this table breaks up. The fields of general grammar, analysis of wealth, and natural history are reorganized around new types of analyses which no longer permit the transparency and reciprocity between things, ideas, and words. Analysis is now the analysis of functions, and, therefore, the function of analysis -- how it works, the ontology it presupposes, the objects and statements that it produces -- has changed. And this change "makes analysis pivot on its axis" and forces it down toward that which is not visible. Its role, then, is to make those invisibilities visible. But if the order of representations has been "shattered", what is the proper form of statements and descriptions? This is a question we carry with us today (as Foucault did, in the mid-'60s). The Deleuzian aspiration of much architectural thinking and writing today has not extended that far beyond the post-structuralism, semiotics, and deconstruction that characterized it for the last 30 years, and all of which are indeed extensions of the prominent role that language had taken on as an object of investigation since the late 19th cent. (See esp. 295 regarding this)
2) "The Limits of Representation"
The wider picture in the book is to identify the discourses which establish epistemes of certain ages, and the radical break between them; the way in which knowledge is produced and organized, hence the way in which categories and attributes of beings are established (think, for example, of the recent-ness of psychoanalysis and anthropology as sciences of humankind). Our concern on a general level is two-fold: 1) what is the difference between the Classical episteme and the modern episteme? 2) What characterizes the modern episteme? In a more particular vein, our question is 1) what is analysis like in the modern episteme, what role does it have, how does it function, what does it produce?
"Archaeology . . . must examine each event in terms of its own evident arrangement; it will recount how the configurations proper to each positivity were modified (in the case of grammar, for example, it will analyze the eclipse of the major role hitherto accorded to the name, and the new importance of systems of inflection; or, another example, the subordination of character to function in living beings); it will analyze the alteration of the empirical entities which inhabit the positivities (the substitution of languages for discourse, of production for wealth); it will study the displacement of the positivities each in relation to the others (for example, the new relation between biology, the sciences of language, and economics); lastly and above all, it will show that the general area of knowledge is no longer that of identities and differences, that of non-quantitative orders, that of a universal characterization, of a general taxinomia, of a non-measurable mathesis, but an area made up of organic structures, that is, of internal relations between elements whose totality performs a function. . . . [T]hese organic structure are discontinuous . . the link between one organic structure and another can no longer, in fact, be the identity of one or several elements, but must be the identity of the relation between the elements (a relation in which visibility no longer plays a role) and of the functions they perform." (218)
The history of the modern episteme has two initial phases that indicate a break with the Classical episteme, the first indicates its limit, between 1775 and 1795 (Smith, Jussieu, et al.,) and the second, between 1795 and 1825 (Ricardo, Cuvier, Bopp), marks the threshold of the modern episteme: "In the first of these phases, the fundamental mode of being of the positivities does not change . . . It is only in the second phase that words, classes, and wealth will acquire a mode of being no longer compatible with that of representation." (221) The first period modifies the configuration of the positivities. Smith transforms the use of "labour" in the concept of the analysis of wealth, and displaces it: "he maintains its function as a means of analyzing exchangeable wealth; but that analysis is no longer simply a way of expressing exchange in terms of need . . it reveals an irreducible, absolute unit of measurement." Wealth is "broken down according to the units of labour that have in reality produced it. Wealth is always a functioning representative element: but, in the end, what it represents is no longer the object of desire, it is labour." (223) What is "actually circulating in the form of things is labour -- not objects of need representing one another, but time and toil, transformed, concealed, forgotten." (225) See also the rest of 225.
In natural history, "The technique that makes it possible to establish the character, the relation between visible structure and criteria of identity, are modified in just the same way as Adam Smith modifies the relations of need or price. Throughout the eighteenth century, classifiers had been establishing character by comparing visible structures, that is, by correlating elements that were homogeneous . . . From Jussieu, Lamarck, and Vicq d'Azyr onward, character, or rather the transformation of structure into character, was to be based upon a principle alien to the domain of the visible -- an internal principle not reducible to the reciprocal interaction of representations. This principle (which corresponds to labour in the economic sphere) is organic structure." (227) "Character is not, then, established by a relation of the visible to itself; it is nothing in itself but the visible point of a complex and hierarchized organic structure in which function plays an essential governing and determining role." (228) As a result, nomenclature changes, or rather no longer designates similarities and differences: "In order to discover the fundamental groups into which natural beings can be divided, it has become necessary to explore in depth the space that lies between their superficial organs and their most concealed ones, and between those latter and the broad functions that they perform."
As for language, I'll be brief. Previously, it was discourse, the spontaneous analysis of representation. Words had an initial designation, had representative contents. At the end of the 18th century, however, there is an attempt to compare and measure the structure of languages in relation to each other. What followed in turn was the analysis of inflection and the modifications of the root: "what was at stake in this comparison of conjugations was no longer the link between original syllable and primary meaning; it was already a more complex relation between the modifications of the radical and the functions of grammar." Hence, language as a system, and its systematic character, its grammatical character is what drives its contents, not the representative functions of words themselves. "Languages are no longer contrasted in accordance with what their words designate, but in accordance with the means whereby those words are linked together." (236)
Finally, to encapsulate the "limits of representation", read from 238 to 240 (the section I read today): note the metaphors of force which call into question the ontology of beings and their corporeal and incorporeal constituents, the notions of visibility and invisibility, the shattering of the function of representation as the order of knowledge -- "Representation is in the process of losing its power to define the mode of being common to things and to knowledge. the very being of that which is represented is now going to fall outside representation itself." (240)
3) "Labour, Life, Language"
"But neither labour, nor the grammatical system, nor organic structure could be defined, or established,, by the simple process whereby representation was decomposed, analyzed, and recomposed, thus representing itself to itself in a pure duplication; the space of analysis could not fail, therefore, to lose its autonomy. Henceforth, the table, ceasing to be the ground of all possible orders, the matrix of all relations, the form in accordance with which all beings are distributed in their singular individuality, forms no more that a thin surface film for knowledge . . . The visible order, with its permanent grid of distinctions, is now only a superficial glitter above and abyss. . . the space of Western knowledge is no about to topple . . . European culture is inventing for itself a depth in which what matters is no longer identities, distinctive characters, permanent tables with all their possible paths and routes, but great hidden forces developed on the basis of their primitive and inaccessible nucleus, origin, causality, and history." I.e., that which is invisible: "From now on things will be represented only from the depths of this density withdrawn into itself, perhaps blurred and darkened by its obscurity, but bound tightly to themselves, assembled or divided, inescapably grouped by the vigour that is hidden down below, in those depths." (251)
Ricardo
Ricardo's analysis extends the factor of labour into analyses of systems of economics. "But the difference between Smith and Ricardo is this: for the first, labour, because it is analyzable into days of subsistence, can be used as a unit common to all other merchandise (including even the commodities necessary to substance themselves); for the second, the quantity of labour makes it possible to determine the value of a thing, not only because the thing is representable in units of work, but first and foremost because labour as a producing activity is 'the source of all value. . . Value has ceased to be a sign [as it was in the Classical age], it has become a product . . [and] any value, whatever it may be, has its origin in labour." (254)
Cuvier
"And just as Ricardo freed labour form its role as a measure in order to introduce it, prior to all exchange, into the general forms of production, so Cuvier freed the subordination of characters from its taxonomic function in order to introduce it, prior to any classification that might occur, into the various organic structural plans of living beings." (263). Cuvier overturns the prior Classical (visible) ordering of organs, he gives function prominence over the organ. "When we consider the organ in relation to its function, we see, therefore, the emergence of 'resemblances' where there is no 'identical' element; a resemblance that is constituted by the transition of the function into evident invisibility." (264) "From Cuvier onward, function, defined according to its non-perceptible form as an effect to be attained, is to serve as a constant middle term and to make it possible to relate together totalities of elements without the slightest visible identity. What to the Classical eyes were merely differences juxtaposed with identities must now be ordered and conceived on the basis of a functional homogeneity which is their hidden foundation." (265) See also same page regarding Cuvier's statement that functions form a whole.
Bopp
In contrast to the Classical episteme, in the new empiricity of general grammar, "For the word to be able to say what it says, it must belong to a grammatical totality which, in relation to the word, is primary, fundamental, and determining." See especially page 289, regarding the function of verbs and personal pronouns, again, the issue of invisibility which constitutes its essence: language "is no longer a system of representations which has the power to pattern and recompose other representations; it designates in its roots the most constant of actions, states, and wishes; what it is trying to say, originally, is not so much what one sees as what one does or what one undergoes; and though it does eventually indicate things as though by pointing at them, it does so only in so far as they are the result, or the object, or the instrument of that action; nouns do not so much pattern the complex table of a representation as pattern and arrest and fix the process of an action. Language is 'rooted' not in the things perceived, but in the active subject. And perhaps, in that case, it is product of will and energy, rather than of the memory that duplicates representation." (289-290)
In summary:
Keep in mind that Foucault is not suggesting a teleological principle in these changes. When he says so-and-so freed taxonomy, or economics, or whatever from a prior epistemological constraint, he doesn't mean that they have constituted, "discovered," the essence that actually defines that object or field of study. He means it in a much more figural sense. On the other hand, Foucault seems interested in the fact that language in the modern episteme, or language as a new object of thought, has taken on a very special role, never before granted to language and which has to do with its intimacy with the human subject.
The analytic of finitude, the discourse on anthropology, and historicity are important, perhaps founding issues for Foucault in this text. We may need them in the future. We will certainly return to the transcendental-empirico doublet when we discuss Kant. For now, these are not issues in our readings. Instead, in our reading of 19th cent. architectural texts, we will take Foucault's archaeology as a starting point, paying attention to terms like visible and invisible, corporeal and incorporeal, function, system, and so on. We will therefore treat our 19th cent. sources as structured by the same episteme. Our ultimate assumption, is that they radicalize the concept of building, and the ontology of architecture, a radicalization we participate in still today.
2) "The Limits of Representation"
The wider picture in the book is to identify the discourses which establish epistemes of certain ages, and the radical break between them; the way in which knowledge is produced and organized, hence the way in which categories and attributes of beings are established (think, for example, of the recent-ness of psychoanalysis and anthropology as sciences of humankind). Our concern on a general level is two-fold: 1) what is the difference between the Classical episteme and the modern episteme? 2) What characterizes the modern episteme? In a more particular vein, our question is 1) what is analysis like in the modern episteme, what role does it have, how does it function, what does it produce?
"Archaeology . . . must examine each event in terms of its own evident arrangement; it will recount how the configurations proper to each positivity were modified (in the case of grammar, for example, it will analyze the eclipse of the major role hitherto accorded to the name, and the new importance of systems of inflection; or, another example, the subordination of character to function in living beings); it will analyze the alteration of the empirical entities which inhabit the positivities (the substitution of languages for discourse, of production for wealth); it will study the displacement of the positivities each in relation to the others (for example, the new relation between biology, the sciences of language, and economics); lastly and above all, it will show that the general area of knowledge is no longer that of identities and differences, that of non-quantitative orders, that of a universal characterization, of a general taxinomia, of a non-measurable mathesis, but an area made up of organic structures, that is, of internal relations between elements whose totality performs a function. . . . [T]hese organic structure are discontinuous . . the link between one organic structure and another can no longer, in fact, be the identity of one or several elements, but must be the identity of the relation between the elements (a relation in which visibility no longer plays a role) and of the functions they perform." (218)
The history of the modern episteme has two initial phases that indicate a break with the Classical episteme, the first indicates its limit, between 1775 and 1795 (Smith, Jussieu, et al.,) and the second, between 1795 and 1825 (Ricardo, Cuvier, Bopp), marks the threshold of the modern episteme: "In the first of these phases, the fundamental mode of being of the positivities does not change . . . It is only in the second phase that words, classes, and wealth will acquire a mode of being no longer compatible with that of representation." (221) The first period modifies the configuration of the positivities. Smith transforms the use of "labour" in the concept of the analysis of wealth, and displaces it: "he maintains its function as a means of analyzing exchangeable wealth; but that analysis is no longer simply a way of expressing exchange in terms of need . . it reveals an irreducible, absolute unit of measurement." Wealth is "broken down according to the units of labour that have in reality produced it. Wealth is always a functioning representative element: but, in the end, what it represents is no longer the object of desire, it is labour." (223) What is "actually circulating in the form of things is labour -- not objects of need representing one another, but time and toil, transformed, concealed, forgotten." (225) See also the rest of 225.
In natural history, "The technique that makes it possible to establish the character, the relation between visible structure and criteria of identity, are modified in just the same way as Adam Smith modifies the relations of need or price. Throughout the eighteenth century, classifiers had been establishing character by comparing visible structures, that is, by correlating elements that were homogeneous . . . From Jussieu, Lamarck, and Vicq d'Azyr onward, character, or rather the transformation of structure into character, was to be based upon a principle alien to the domain of the visible -- an internal principle not reducible to the reciprocal interaction of representations. This principle (which corresponds to labour in the economic sphere) is organic structure." (227) "Character is not, then, established by a relation of the visible to itself; it is nothing in itself but the visible point of a complex and hierarchized organic structure in which function plays an essential governing and determining role." (228) As a result, nomenclature changes, or rather no longer designates similarities and differences: "In order to discover the fundamental groups into which natural beings can be divided, it has become necessary to explore in depth the space that lies between their superficial organs and their most concealed ones, and between those latter and the broad functions that they perform."
As for language, I'll be brief. Previously, it was discourse, the spontaneous analysis of representation. Words had an initial designation, had representative contents. At the end of the 18th century, however, there is an attempt to compare and measure the structure of languages in relation to each other. What followed in turn was the analysis of inflection and the modifications of the root: "what was at stake in this comparison of conjugations was no longer the link between original syllable and primary meaning; it was already a more complex relation between the modifications of the radical and the functions of grammar." Hence, language as a system, and its systematic character, its grammatical character is what drives its contents, not the representative functions of words themselves. "Languages are no longer contrasted in accordance with what their words designate, but in accordance with the means whereby those words are linked together." (236)
Finally, to encapsulate the "limits of representation", read from 238 to 240 (the section I read today): note the metaphors of force which call into question the ontology of beings and their corporeal and incorporeal constituents, the notions of visibility and invisibility, the shattering of the function of representation as the order of knowledge -- "Representation is in the process of losing its power to define the mode of being common to things and to knowledge. the very being of that which is represented is now going to fall outside representation itself." (240)
3) "Labour, Life, Language"
"But neither labour, nor the grammatical system, nor organic structure could be defined, or established,, by the simple process whereby representation was decomposed, analyzed, and recomposed, thus representing itself to itself in a pure duplication; the space of analysis could not fail, therefore, to lose its autonomy. Henceforth, the table, ceasing to be the ground of all possible orders, the matrix of all relations, the form in accordance with which all beings are distributed in their singular individuality, forms no more that a thin surface film for knowledge . . . The visible order, with its permanent grid of distinctions, is now only a superficial glitter above and abyss. . . the space of Western knowledge is no about to topple . . . European culture is inventing for itself a depth in which what matters is no longer identities, distinctive characters, permanent tables with all their possible paths and routes, but great hidden forces developed on the basis of their primitive and inaccessible nucleus, origin, causality, and history." I.e., that which is invisible: "From now on things will be represented only from the depths of this density withdrawn into itself, perhaps blurred and darkened by its obscurity, but bound tightly to themselves, assembled or divided, inescapably grouped by the vigour that is hidden down below, in those depths." (251)
Ricardo
Ricardo's analysis extends the factor of labour into analyses of systems of economics. "But the difference between Smith and Ricardo is this: for the first, labour, because it is analyzable into days of subsistence, can be used as a unit common to all other merchandise (including even the commodities necessary to substance themselves); for the second, the quantity of labour makes it possible to determine the value of a thing, not only because the thing is representable in units of work, but first and foremost because labour as a producing activity is 'the source of all value. . . Value has ceased to be a sign [as it was in the Classical age], it has become a product . . [and] any value, whatever it may be, has its origin in labour." (254)
Cuvier
"And just as Ricardo freed labour form its role as a measure in order to introduce it, prior to all exchange, into the general forms of production, so Cuvier freed the subordination of characters from its taxonomic function in order to introduce it, prior to any classification that might occur, into the various organic structural plans of living beings." (263). Cuvier overturns the prior Classical (visible) ordering of organs, he gives function prominence over the organ. "When we consider the organ in relation to its function, we see, therefore, the emergence of 'resemblances' where there is no 'identical' element; a resemblance that is constituted by the transition of the function into evident invisibility." (264) "From Cuvier onward, function, defined according to its non-perceptible form as an effect to be attained, is to serve as a constant middle term and to make it possible to relate together totalities of elements without the slightest visible identity. What to the Classical eyes were merely differences juxtaposed with identities must now be ordered and conceived on the basis of a functional homogeneity which is their hidden foundation." (265) See also same page regarding Cuvier's statement that functions form a whole.
Bopp
In contrast to the Classical episteme, in the new empiricity of general grammar, "For the word to be able to say what it says, it must belong to a grammatical totality which, in relation to the word, is primary, fundamental, and determining." See especially page 289, regarding the function of verbs and personal pronouns, again, the issue of invisibility which constitutes its essence: language "is no longer a system of representations which has the power to pattern and recompose other representations; it designates in its roots the most constant of actions, states, and wishes; what it is trying to say, originally, is not so much what one sees as what one does or what one undergoes; and though it does eventually indicate things as though by pointing at them, it does so only in so far as they are the result, or the object, or the instrument of that action; nouns do not so much pattern the complex table of a representation as pattern and arrest and fix the process of an action. Language is 'rooted' not in the things perceived, but in the active subject. And perhaps, in that case, it is product of will and energy, rather than of the memory that duplicates representation." (289-290)
In summary:
Keep in mind that Foucault is not suggesting a teleological principle in these changes. When he says so-and-so freed taxonomy, or economics, or whatever from a prior epistemological constraint, he doesn't mean that they have constituted, "discovered," the essence that actually defines that object or field of study. He means it in a much more figural sense. On the other hand, Foucault seems interested in the fact that language in the modern episteme, or language as a new object of thought, has taken on a very special role, never before granted to language and which has to do with its intimacy with the human subject.
The analytic of finitude, the discourse on anthropology, and historicity are important, perhaps founding issues for Foucault in this text. We may need them in the future. We will certainly return to the transcendental-empirico doublet when we discuss Kant. For now, these are not issues in our readings. Instead, in our reading of 19th cent. architectural texts, we will take Foucault's archaeology as a starting point, paying attention to terms like visible and invisible, corporeal and incorporeal, function, system, and so on. We will therefore treat our 19th cent. sources as structured by the same episteme. Our ultimate assumption, is that they radicalize the concept of building, and the ontology of architecture, a radicalization we participate in still today.
Monday, February 8, 2010
week 2 summary notes
Today we really got into the difference between the Classical and the Modern episteme and began to look more critically at this problem about the reciprocal relation betweeen discourse and discipline.
Fayes brought into this discussion the intuition that objects of analysis are not discovered so much as produced within a field of knowledge.
Robbie introduced us to a quote that discussed the failure of Representation to capture the complexity of the foundations of life (understood as the intersectoin of work, biology, and language). Matt and others also raised important observations and questions.
Ultimately, what we want to understand is just this idea of the mode of Being common to things and knowledge.
We next embarked on a quick study of the panopticon -- my question here is for next week and which you will all need to submit to the blog discussion the following:
why is the panopticon more "powerful" than the dungeon or the prison as previously understood?
I look forward to your entries.
Please send them by Sunday night so we can review them in class on Monday.
Your next set of readings will be from Quatramere de Qunicy and JNL Durand. I'll try to have these ready by tomorrow
Best
Peter
Fayes brought into this discussion the intuition that objects of analysis are not discovered so much as produced within a field of knowledge.
Robbie introduced us to a quote that discussed the failure of Representation to capture the complexity of the foundations of life (understood as the intersectoin of work, biology, and language). Matt and others also raised important observations and questions.
Ultimately, what we want to understand is just this idea of the mode of Being common to things and knowledge.
We next embarked on a quick study of the panopticon -- my question here is for next week and which you will all need to submit to the blog discussion the following:
why is the panopticon more "powerful" than the dungeon or the prison as previously understood?
I look forward to your entries.
Please send them by Sunday night so we can review them in class on Monday.
Your next set of readings will be from Quatramere de Qunicy and JNL Durand. I'll try to have these ready by tomorrow
Best
Peter
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